LATEST GIFT A CRUEL BLOW

MY CHRISTMAS TURNED INTO A BLAST AS AN ICY WIND SWEPT THE PLACE

Welcome to Informer’s first rectangle for 2018. I wish everyone a happy new year, although the post-Christmas tensions continue to run high at Chez Informer.

It was the leaf blower. Everything was going well until the leaf blower.

For the record, I never asked Santa for a leaf blower. In fact, when the prospect was mooted by Mrs Informer back in October, Informer made it perfectly clear that the leaf blower is one of the biggest cons ever perpetrated against humankind.

Sure, it may do what it says on the tin, which is blowing leaves. However, the true dastardliness of the leaf blower rests with how it convinces consumers that, once said leaves are blown by said leaf blower, the blown area in question will henceforth remain free of leafy encumbrances.

This is never so, is it? All the leaf blower ever actually achieves is to temporarily relocate leaves from one area where, let’s face it, they aren’t doing much harm at all, to another area where they’re not doing any harm either.

Then before you have the chance to snap a selfie and celebrate the freshly cleared bit, the slightest breeze puffs every leaf back to its pre-blown position, as if the leaf blower was not only never used, but never existed in the first place.

Still, Informer did the right thing; the Christmas thing. With the present unwrapped, I duly emitted an open-mouthed gasp of feigned joy – brilliantly concealing the despair I was actually feeling – before adjourning outdoors at the behest of Mrs Informer to give the accursed implement a trial run.

It worked a treat, as leaf blowers generally do, but within seconds of the patio being foliage free, an angel’s whisper of a zephyr sent the leaves fluttering back. I repeated the procedure, as did the zephyr, and this farce continued back and forth for several pointless minutes.

Informer’s conclusion? Total waste of money, total waste of time and a total disregard for my Christmas wishes. Hence the ongoing unease at home.

Normally, Informer might have deferred to one’s legendary reserves of sangfroid and thus moved maturely into 2018.

Unfortunately, the leaf blower was the last in a litany of Christmas Day insults at my expense.

The others included a book about coping with old age, undies four sizes too big, a book about coping with old age, a sock tree, an eight-pack of dollar shop underarm deodorant, a book about coping with old age, and Neil Diamond’s Greatest Hits – that last one a practical joke by my daughter who is out of the will and no longer laughing.

Informer’s dismay is a First World problem, to be sure. Nevertheless, such lack of thought was doubly injurious with the leaf

“WITH THE PRESENT UNWRAPPED, I DULY EMITTED AN OPEN-MOUTHED GASP OF FEIGNED JOY – BRILLIANTLY CONCEALING THE DESPAIR I WAS ACTUALLY FEELING.”

blower because, despite Santa’s card bearing my name, Mrs Informer’s cunning was writ considerably larger. She’s wanted a leaf blower for yonks.

Accordingly, I did the only sensible, albeit churlish, thing, which was to chuck the wretched gadget down the driveway whereupon it bounced, jolted and crashed very pleasingly before shattering into several pieces and coming to irreparable rest on the nature strip, ready for the council’s next kerbside clean-up.

“That’s the last straw,” fumed Mrs Informer, to which I, sensing a disdainful breeze on the rise, replied: “Don’t worry, it’ll be back here in a jiffy”.

And as I pointed out, sacrifices must be made when turning over a new leaf blower.